The Evolution of My Spirituality

This is my response to my writing class prompt, "If you had told me ______ when I was 15, you could have pushed me over with a feather."

If you had told me when I was 15 that I would go on to have a high school student write about how I was her spiritual advisor, you could have pushed me over with a feather. Fifteen was the year that I stopped going to church. I didn’t feel connected to the people or the messages, and I got nothing spiritual from the experience. And although that was my tenth year at Sidwell, I also didn’t feel particularly connected to Quaker spirituality. While it was only a couple years later that Quakerism felt like my spiritual home, it wasn’t until my mother’s final months that I was ready to be “all in” and not just dabble. 

At the point that I was ready to invest, I learned that you get out of your spirituality what you put into it. Little by little "cheerfully walking over the earth answering to that of God in everyone" became second nature. I practiced first once a week in Meeting for Worship until the practice and then the routine spilled, joyously, into the rest of my life. My disposition and my connection to the spirit of love, which is how I know God, are one.

So now I feel deeply touched and moved and inspired to learn that one of my students even lightheartedly writes that she considers me her spiritual advisor, but I’m not as utterly shocked as I would have been half a lifetime ago. I make no secret of my approach to the world and my hope is that people can see that my rose-colored glasses, for better and worse, are the product of genuine love overflowing in me. I feel no need for anyone else to find inspiration in the same places that I do, but I sure do hope that they get to experience the kind of joy that fills my days.